1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to data management and more particularly to an organization-specific classification system for data management.
2. Description of Related Art
Traditionally, document and record management systems utilize a classification code, such as a unique name, to assign a document type to an instance or group of documents. For some systems, more structure may be required for classifying documents. In some instances, companies may create and maintain information taxonomies, which may or may not be hierarchical, in order to handle the classification codes.
Furthermore, companies may desire to set policies based on classification codes. There may be regulatory requirements, laws, or other policies that are required in management of some documents. For example, a life insurance company is required to maintain insurance policies for a particular period of time after the death of the policy holder. Because companies do not want to maintain documents for a longer period of time than required, there is a strong desire to articulate or specify policies such as retention policies.
Conventionally, one stylized version of the classification code comprises a three letter alpha string that identifies a general type (e.g., “ADM” for administrative) and a three number string for the more specific type (e.g., “100” for general memo). For example, “ADM-100” refers to a document that is an administrative memo.
The coding may be applied to the document or group of documents in various manners depending on the medium the document is stored in. For example, if the document is in an electronic format, the coding may be metadata attached to the document. For hard copy documents, the document may be compiled in a box with same type documents, and the box is coded (e.g., classification code is written or barcoded on the box). In embodiments using a barcode, a records management system may coordinate and/or identify the barcode (e.g., barcode from Box1 indicated that Box1 contains ADM-100 documents. The coding may link the document or set of documents to a retention policy and schedule for disposal.
The use of the traditional classification codes tends to work well when a company is only located in one jurisdiction, geography, or business or needs only one retention schedule for documents within a particular code regardless of where they are created or stored. In situations where the company exists in multiple jurisdictions and/or geographies (e.g., country, state, county), each jurisdiction may have very different laws or regulations. These different laws or regulations may dictate, as examples, different retention policies, different security policies, and different access policies for the same document type.
For example, UK requirements for retaining an account ledger (e.g., classification code “ACC-200”) may be different then U.S. requirements for the same type of document. The same may be true for different business units within the same jurisdiction independent of legal or regulatory requirements. Thus, the company cannot rely strictly on document type classification coding as the only or primary linkage to retention or other policies, as the document type classification coding does not provide sufficient dimensions to address geographic, business unit, or jurisdictional distinctions around which policy can be articulated or specified and with which documents (electronic or physical) can be thus coded.
In order to solve this problem, one prior art method utilizes an ad hoc tagging scheme. For example, a document is initially tagged with the traditional document type classification code. A user may append more tagging codes such as customer code or office code resulting in more attributes. Thus, a plurality of classification codes is associated with each document (e.g., “ADM-100” with client “BankX” and location “NYC”). Disadvantageously, this method does not work well when companies merge or if the law changes for a certain type of documents. Additionally, ad hoc tagging is generally not easily tracked because each user may apply their own unique tags and attributes (e.g., one user may use “NYC” while a second user may note location as “New York”). A traditional management system and traditional approaches are not designed or configured to track, store, retrieve, or manage either policies or documents in this ad hoc manner.
Therefore, there is a need for a classification code system that incorporates locality/jurisdiction data into the classification code.